Stephen Roney's Blog, page 200

The Conservative Liberal Budget

 

Friend Xerxes summarizes the highlights of the new Canadian federal budget as “child care, a green economy, pandemic relief, increases to old age pensions, funding for improving the health of indigenous communities.”

Although introduced by the “Liberal Party,” this is a strikingly conservative set of priorities—conservative in the true sense.

The OED defines “liberalism” thus: “Support for or advocacy of individual rights, civil liberties, and reform tending towards individual freedom, democracy, or social equality; a political and social philosophy based on these principles.”

That is more or less what they call “libertarianism” in the US now. The Koch brothers are liberals. Maxime Bernier is a liberal, or was when he ran for the Conservative leadership.

“Conservatism” or “Toryism” sees this approach as soulless. The state, instead, is like a family. Equality is not the point; the point is everyone having responsibilities to everyone else.

Let’s go down the list of what the Liberal government wants:

Government-funded child care is classically conservative. The government as parent: this is an almost perfect expression of that concept.

A green economy: this is conservation, preservation of what is, conservatism by both definition and etymology.

Pandemic relief: Conservatives, seeing government as a parent, would of course issue relief. I assume, however, that any government would see this as their responsibility in an emergency. And all governments have, worldwide, in this pandemic.

Increases in old age pensions: in Canada or the UK, the old age pension was originally brought in by a Liberal government, but less as a matter of ideology than to co-opt the Marxist left. In world terms, the first old age pension was introduced by Bismarck in Germany, under a conservative regime. It can probably be justified by either ideology: as paternal care for a vulnerable group, or as just reward for labour.

Funding indigenous communities: a classic conservative position. Liberalism calls for social equality. Treating indigenous people differently is an obvious violation of that principle. Conservatism is more inclined to endorse such things; it sees the indigenous people as wards of the state, like children. Liberals would consider this an affront to human dignity.

Perhaps the most important distinction between the two philosophies is that conservatism seeks to preserve the status quo, with those in power preserved in power, while liberalism wants to open things up and, broadly, democratize. 

In this ultimate sense, too, the modern Canadian Liberal Party is conservative. It is the “natural governing party,” which represents and is supported by the big corporations, the government bureaucracy itself, the professions. It sees “populism,” unrestrained democracy, as its enemy.

Each philosophy might have an argument, but the important thing is to keep our terminology consistent. There is a danger is political speech to deceive by falsifying the meaning of terms. The general intent of much political language, Orwell warned, is “to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Look! Up in the Sky!

 

Something is happening in the news about which I have no expertise and no insight. And yet it seems to me dishonest not to note it. Reports of UFOs are rather rapidly becoming both more common and more official.

It looks to me as though people in authority are orchestrating this, to soften us up to the idea that UFOs are a real thing. Governments used to be accused of being secretive about UFOs. The obvious reason, if true, is that they feared mass panic. Perhaps they have chosen this time of pandemic as useful for slipping it in without causing panic, the way governments have always buried bad news by releasing it on a Friday afternoon. We are too preoccupied with viruses to get really upsest about something that seems more abstract and hypothetical.

Back in the 1940s, when this UFO thing began, it was possible to dismiss it all as mass hallucination. Jung did at the time. But this does not work anymore: with smartphones becoming more common, we are getting more video and images, not just hearsay; and the objects are showing up on our instruments.

I find it implausible that these are Russian or Chinese secret weapons. They commonly “defy the known laws of physics.” It is unlikely that the Chinese or Russians have secretly developed technology so much more advanced than the Americans, generally well ahead on technology, that they cannot even imagine how it works. 

Are they America’s own secret weapons? That seems unlikely, as the military itself, at high levels, is now reporting and acknowledging sightings. If it were their own, they would know not to publicize it.

Are they alien craft? I have always thought this, too, highly unlikely. The distances are too great. Even if you could, what would be worth coming this far for? What could they not find closer to home? Breeding stock? An absurd fiction, if you understand the most basic biology and biotechnology. Are they here only to observe? Surely any civilization able to develop the technology to bridge the vast distances would also be able to develop the technology to monitor us remotely, without having to make the long trip, even robotically. 

Are they beings from another dimension? Stripping out the pseudo-science, this means beings of pure spirit—angels or demons. Granted, they are physical as seen and videoed; but it has always been understood than angels and demons could take physical form if they chose. This seems rationally possible; but a motive is lacking. Why would they appear as they do, silent and remote? What message would they mean to convey? Why not just show up and talk to someone, like in the old days?

Elon Musk might explain the UFOs with the hypothesis that we are living in a simulation; we are all video game characters. So these objects are there simply because they are put there by the unseen programmer; or else they are a bug in the code.

I feel this has little explanatory power. Anything imaginable could be accounted for in the same way. Whether we are in a simulation or not in a simulation makes no difference. The question “What are they, and what are they doing?” remains the same.

A more likely scenario, to my mind, is that the UFOs are from the future. This has the advantage of being the explanation most in conformity with Occam’s Razor. 

Is it possible to time travel? Conceptually, yes; we can easily imagine it. The one sure proof that it is not possible has always been simply that we have never encountered visitors from the future.

Perhaps we have. Perhaps they were always up there, observing, but until recently we lacked the technological awareness to conceptualize these strange objects in the sky as spacecraft. They were just unexplained lights in the sky; perhaps angels, perhaps apsaras, devas, minor divinities, perhaps just hallucinations.

It seems reasonable that these visitors would try to be unobtrusive, in order not to alter the past. Leaving aside “time paradoxes,” which might after all be possible to go back and fix if necessary, this could be for the same reason that we do not look kindly on littering in a National Park. They are touring, observing, studying their own origins, as we would. 

The ability to time travel would explain all the apparent violations of the laws of physics. If you can warp time, you need not be concerned with trifles like rates of acceleration or deceleration. Occam’s razor.

Whatever the answer, at this point, any possible answer boggles the mind.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

That Old Hallelujah Chorus

My friend Xerxes recently wrote a column suggesting that the COVID pandemic might go on and on. I do not think so, and wrote so at the time. I think we’ll get a pretty good handle on it by the summer, and we have seen the worst.

But others objected to the column on quite different grounds. One responded, not that Xerxes was too pessimistic on the facts, but that he did not like to contemplate such a dystopian future. A second objected to thinking about COVID because “we become what we think about.” A third, objecting to the gloom her husband was exposing them all to on the TV news, wanted to “vehemently” sing at him “‘I’ve got that joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart ...”

This reveals the sickness in our hearts. Not only are these people grossly immoral, but they are calling morality itself immoral. This is the one unforgivable sin, and all of them are committing it. Our moral duty is to seek the truth. If truth is to us of no value, what exactly are our values?

There is a reason Satan is called the “father of lies.”

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

The Second Coming

 

Courtesy of the "Toronto Relationship Clinic"

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,    

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

 

Current academic articles based on “critical race theory” keep cascading across my desk. They always accuse the US of being a racist society, based on “white supremacy.”

It is not obvious what they mean by this. I think many are confused. 

It is true, of course, that the US once had race-based slavery, and did not abolish it until 1865. But then again, most of the world used to have slavery, it was abolished, and in the US it was abolished over a hundred and fifty years ago. 

It is also true that discriminatory laws based on race were revived and then persisted in the US South until 1965, a hundred years later. But that too is over fifty years ago. Most now alive would have no memory.

What makes the US “white supremacist” today? Merriam-Webster defines “White supremacy” as “the belief that the white race is inherently superior to other races and that white people should have control over people of other races.” Oxford defines it as: “The belief that white people constitute a superior race and should therefore dominate society, typically to the exclusion or detriment of other racial and ethnic groups, in particular black or Jewish people.”

According to the US Constitution, and American statute law, to act on any such belief in America today would be illegal. The US is almost uniquely a non-racial nation. To be German or Japanese or French is an ethnic, a racial, designation. To be American is not. It is the one country in the world least based on any kind of racial supremacy. In America, by its very founding document, all men are created equal.

There is no constituency to speak of in modern America for such an opinion as “white supremacy.” I doubt any reader of this piece has ever heard or read such an opinion expressed by anyone in the past forty years, in public or in private. I have not. And I read a lot.

So how can the US be said to be based, today, on “white supremacy”?

By a redefinition of the term. “White supremacy” as the term is used by the critical race theorists means any situation in which it is tolerated that people with white skin are statistically doing better on some metric than are people with darker-toned skin. This must be ended, by main force, or the system is “white supremacist.” Pale-skinned people of primarily European ancestry do better than “blacks” on measures of average income and average educational attainment. So long as this is true, apparently, the USA is and will be “white supremacist.”

Yet we have a logical problem. If you factor in all racial groups, instead of an arbitrary two, it turns out that the USA is “Asian supremacist.” Asian Americans do better than either European or African Americans on both those metrics. And, given that the Oxford definition expressly excludes Jews from the category “white,” American is probably even more “Jew supremacist.”

The essential premise of critical race theory is exactly the same premise as Nazi race theory. There and then, it was the Jews running everything; for the Jews in prewar Germany were wealthier and better educated than the average German. So they were supposedly in control of everything, and were to blame for all the sufferings of the Germans. Here and now, it is the “whites” running everything, and responsible for all bad things. Increasingly hear calls for similar remedies as well.

No cause for panic, of course—many will say. After all, the Jews were only six percent of the German population in 1930. “Whites” in the US are the majority. They really do hold power, so long as the US is a democracy, and so have little to fear, however violent and vile the rhetoric becomes.

Except, to begin with, the rules are changing. The innovation of “intersectionality” allows things to be parsed so that the ethnicity can be expanded or contracted as seems useful. “White” can be read to exclude “Hispanics,” Jews, Arabs, Muslims, Sicilians, or whatever group might be convenient. And you can discount women, homosexuals, and so forth. The remaining core might be entirely vulnerable in a democracy, depending on how the lines are drawn. Only a bigger and better Holocaust.

But it might not go that direction. Instead, there are growing signs that the gun turrets are swinging to Asians and Jews. Street attacks on Jews and Asians seem to be growing. The logic of critical race theory points inexorably in this direction.

It is amazing how history repeats; it is amazing how people seem incapable of learning from history. 

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Pregnant Individuals

 

In last night’s news, the CBC reported on the decision to give priority to vaccinating “pregnant individuals,” who are apparently at higher risk from COVID. Throughout the story, both anchor and interviewee persisted in referring to “pregnant individuals” or “pregnant persons,” never “women” or “mothers.”

It strikes me as dehumanizing: as though the only salient fact about those mentioned here is being pregnant. As though they were no more than nondescript biological sacks. 

But I suppose more importantly, it is an open denial of objective reality. It is fantastically dangerous when an entire society becomes psychotic.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Earth Day Reflections

 

Yesterday was Earth Day. Normally I don’t care.

But friend Xerxes wrote a commemorative column. It prompts some interesting questions.

He condemns the automobile on the grounds that it sacrifices the lives of thousands of young men and women every year. Presumably he means in road accidents. But couldn’t you also say that about aspirin? Or water? Or anything you could name? 

You need a cost-benefit analysis. Surprisingly few people seem to understand the concept. A telling example is the surprising resistance during this pandemic to getting vaccinated. Many would rather risk a one-in-one hundred chance of dying of CIVID to avoid a one-in-a-million chance of dying of the vaccine.

More generally, Xerxes lament that the material progress we have made, notably in medicine, has not been shared by other species—that the Suzuki Foundation estimates, by computer modelling, that 150 species go extinct every day.

Here we have to ask what our ultimate goals and values are. If it is to improve the number and longevity of all life forms, we have a problem. The very medical progress Xerxes lauds is at their expense. It comes in large part from killing bacteria and parasites. 

If we want to feed the poor, that too comes at the expense of other species. Because that is what they eat. And, if we multiply and extend the life of any other given species, that comes at the expense of whatever species they prey on or displace for their sustenance.

Trying to make the welfare of all species our concern seems vain. That seems to be the fundamental premise of the environmental movement; yet no action of ours other than blowing up the planet can really make things either better or worse given that standard. 

The traditional premise is that we focus on what pleases God, and what improves the lives of our fellow humans: the greatest good for the greatest number. Beyond that, to avoid unnecessary cruelty to other species.

Yet Xerxes, and most environmentalists, as opposed to animal rights activists, seem not to be concerned with the suffering of other living beings, exactly. Rather, with the possible extinction of species. Why is this more important? If species are more significant than individuals, wouldn’t it follow, in human terms, that corporations are more important than people? If not, why the difference?

Xerxes writes:

“We need more housing. But endless 5000-square-foot single-family residences on bulldozer-flattened subdivisions are not the answer.”

To make such a statement, I think one needs to propose a better alternative. People have moved to subdivisions because it was the most affordable family housing. Kids have a better life if they have a yard to play in. Where would you have them go instead?

Xerxes concludes by lamenting that all his efforts to reduce, reuse and recycle are negated by population growth. 

Here again, we have to establish what the goal is. If it is “the greatest good for the greatest number,” then human population growth is a self-evident good. If it is not, for whom or for what value are we recycling and conserving resources?

If you cannot figure out the answer, comment. I can help.




'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Jeffery Epstein Didn't Kill Himself. But Maybe George Floyd Did.

 

No peace, no justice.

I hold to the principle that we should not second-guess the judicial process. It is there to settle disputes; social cohesion requires us to respect it. If a court declares a defendant not guilty, we owe it to him or her, to our neighbours, and ultimately to ourselves, to accept that and move on.

However, I believe the judgement in the Chauvin trial is wrong. I believe this precisely because the rules were not followed here. I expect it to be appealed and overturned. There was obvious public pressure on the jurors to return a guilty verdict. Their verdict was under duress, and so, just as with a contract signed under duress, it is not valid. It was equivalent to a lynching.

The jurors had every reason to fear that, if they returned a verdict of not guilty, their city would be burned down. Maxine Waters had called for violence if a guilty verdict was not returned. Joe Biden had come close to demanding a guilty verdict. They had every reason to fear their own homes might be burned down, themselves or their family attacked, perhaps killed.

Under the circumstances, Chauvin could not get a fair trial. By the rules, if a fair trial cannot be conducted, he must be assumed to be innocent.

I do personally doubt his guilt. No reasonable man with normal instincts for self-preservation would murder another person slowly in plain sight of many witnesses holding video cameras. Hence, any reasonable man must doubt Chauvin’s guilt. 

Some have actually argued that it was worth sacrificing Chauvin’s chance for a fair trial to the greater good—to retain civil peace and avoid more rioting.

This is folly. It will only lead to worse rioting, as the mob realizes they can impose their will by rioting. And it will ensure that police stop doing anything about it—not worth the risk of death on the spot or a lynching if there is any confrontation. Perfect recipe for chaos.

A better approach would be to go in the opposite direction: free Chauvin immediately, and legislate full immunity for police from any murder or manslaughter charge if any suspect resists arrest. This would cause no risk to the public from police brutality: it is simple enough to cooperate during an arrest, and presumably the police would have to prove resistance with body cam footage. Resisting arrest is, moreover, refusing the protection of the justice system. Your call.

Something like this might even be necessary, under these circumstances, to restore order.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Ford Gets a Better Idea

 

Doug Ford’s government here in Ontario is facing criticism for having called for a total lockdown, then rescinding part of it within 24 hours. They had intended to have police stop people and issue fines if they did not have a good reason to be out and about. A number of police chiefs publicly declared they would not do it. The government had intended to close playgrounds, but people quickly and loudly protested that, with kids home from school, they needed the playgrounds. And kids playing outdoors did not spread COVID.

I would have been okay with the original measures. This is a public health emergency. In an emergency, it is acceptable in our liberal democratic tradition to suspend civil liberties. This is why we have a “riot act” in most democracies, and a “war measures act.” France has been using a stop-and-check policy just like the one envisaged.

But if we feel the initial orders went too far, surely it is to the government’s credit that they backed off quickly. Anyone can make a mistake, and everyone does. The mark of a good and competent person is to acknowledge this, and change. How have we lost this basic principle of morality and good judgement?

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

The Endless Pandemic

 

People are losing hope. In Canada, we are into a third wave of the pandemic, and each wave seems worse than the last. Friend Xerxes writes a column on “What if it never ends?”

It will end.

Even without any human intervention, all epidemics end. The Spanish flu managed four waves, but it ended, without a vaccine.

We are going to break this third wave by summer. We may be fighting variants for a few years, but at a lower level, with booster shots. 

See if I’m not right.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

COVID and Divine Justice

 

Someone asks, “Why would a good and just God send COVID?”

It is a fair question. The moment you accept monotheism, everything is from God that is not from man.

But COVID may be from man. I think it is likely it escaped from the Wuhan Virology lab. It may even have been intended as a weapon, although its release was surely in error. It is mysterious how outbreaks seem to have been less severe in East Asian countries—almost as if there is some component sensitive to Chinese/Mongoloid and non-Chinese genetics.

But even if it is from God—it is just. We needed and deserved chastisement. Our nearly universal acceptance of abortion is about the same thing that led Yahweh in the Old Testament to wipe out the Canaanites, or the Romans to salt the ground of Carthage. They practiced child sacrifice. The collapse of the Aztecs, the Inca, might be accounted for in the same way: they practiced human sacrifice. They deserved to be taken down, and Yahweh did so, swiftly, through the Spanish. 

Aside from killing them outright, we have also ignored the welfare of the young in having women all work outside the home. We have ignored the need to pass on morals to our young. These are ample justification for destroying a culture. The entire point of a culture is to pass on moral guidance generation to generation. Our culture is therefore poisoned.

If this has not led to our own destruction—yet—it seems only because there is not some other culture ready to replace us. The Spanish, or the Hebrews, or the Romans, have not yet arrived on the scene. Who might they be?

Not the mainland Chinese, the CCP. If we are depraved, they are more depraved.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.